


Day 243

by Basingstoke



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character of Color, Choose Your Own Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-30
Updated: 2006-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:57:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to Zee and Shalott for beta, encouragement, crack. Thanks to Livia for inspiration, knife to my throat, monkey on my back.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. The Premise

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Zee and Shalott for beta, encouragement, crack. Thanks to Livia for inspiration, knife to my throat, monkey on my back.

"I hate this island," Rodney said, very calmly, staring at what was left of his schematics. "Hate it. Like cancer and plague and-and-and caviar! I hate it!" he shouted at Ronon.

"I know," Ronon said.

"You don't know! You don't have any--okay, probably you do know! Why aren't you shouting?" Rodney demanded. "Why don't you ever swear? I would feel better if you would swear and shout and kick things!"

"I'm cooking," Ronon said.

"*Jesus*," Rodney groaned. He kicked the dead, gutted jumper, making no impression on it whatsoever and probably breaking his toe, and limped back over to the shelter. Ronon was cooking in the firepit in front of the lean-to, making fish stew in a big nutshell. "I have to start all over," Rodney said. "From scratch. Only now, I only have twenty minutes left on the laptop instead of two and a half hours."

"I can redraw your schematics," Ronon said.

"No you can't."

"I can."

"Excuse me! They're a little more technical than cave paintings, all right? I think it might be a bit beyond your level!"

Ronon stirred the stew. "Cave paintings?"

"It's an insult," Rodney muttered.

"I know it's an insult. Is that an insult calling me primitive or calling me artistic?"

"Calling you artistic wouldn't be an insult."

"It is on Sateda."

Rodney snorted. "Well, that's just uncivilized. What kind of culture doesn't have any culture to it?"

Ronon looked at him like he wasn't making any sense. Ronon gave him that look a lot. He tasted the stew and said, "It's done."

"Oh, good," Rodney said, meaning it. Ronon was a good cook. Rodney got the chopsticks from their pocket above the sleeping mat and joined him over the shell. "Yellow fish?"

"Blue fish."

"Really! How did you get that?" Rodney nabbed a big piece with his chopsticks.

"Beached itself in the storm. Fish all over the place. The rest are in the drying rack."

Then they ate until there was no meat left, because blue fish was too much of a treat to waste time on talking. Usually it was white fish and yellow fish with big nuts for dessert, nothing else, and after eight months, even Rodney was getting kind of bored. Once, Ronon caught a red and white spotted fish, but neither of them had ever seen another one.

Rodney sighed. "That was nice."

"Lots of fat."

"Sort of..." Rodney waved his hand. "Coconutty." Rodney zipped out of his uniform jacket, which he wore for protection even though he'd jettisoned the shirt on the second day. "Check my moles?"

Ronon slurped the rest of the seaweed-flavored broth and leaned over him, pushing Rodney's head this way and that to check his neck under his shaggy hair. It wasn't paranoia. Rodney was cancer-prone and the sunscreen ran out months ago. Possibly he should have taken his genetics into account before going into this field, but then again, who knew astrophysics would lead to being stranded on an alien island devoid of polarized glass, powdered titanium, or, failing those basic commodities, a little shade?

His hands were scorched reddish-tan with perpetual sunburn. They didn't have a mirror, but Rodney was sure he had more crow's feet than he used to. Ronon, of course, tanned an even more disgustingly beautiful copper, while his hair gained a slight bronze glow.

"You're skinny," Ronon said. "You need to eat more." He poked Rodney in the ribs.

Rodney swatted his hand. "I eat all the time. I haven't forgotten my hypoglycemia!"

"We should try eating the flower buds again."

Rodney made a face at the very suggestion. "Let's not and say we did."

"My grandmother used to fry flower buds," Ronon pressed. "They were good. Like fried zucchini."

"Don't talk about fried zucchini," Rodney moaned.

"Or French fries."

"Ronon!" Rodney tried and failed not to yearn for power bars, cake, bread, sandwiches, potatoes, yams, anything, anything that wasn't baked or boiled fish. Starches, oh, god, starches! "Look, we don't have any oil. We can't fry anything. Stop talking about it before I remember you're red meat!"

Ronon sighed. He leaned back on his elbows and poked dry palm fronds into the firepit with his boot. "You're skinny," he said eventually.

"Oh." Rodney looked down at himself, his still-pale stomach. He didn't feel different. "You think so?"

"Yes."

"I suppose the Atkins diet agrees with me. Disagrees with me."

"I want a sandwich," Ronon said glumly. He leaned against Rodney's back and they watched the sun go down. Rodney supposed it was beautiful, the sun over the water, the red clouds receding over the horizon and all that. It was starting to feel like defeat, though. Another day.

Rodney sighed and put his jacket back on. The sand was warm under his butt. That was one thing the island did have, a very mild climate, apart from-- "Damn," he realized, "the water!"

Ronon jumped to his feet like his hair was on fire. They ran for the water-catchers before they lost the light completely.

There was no fresh water on the island. Fish, glossy black rocks, sand, a few palm trees, but no water except the dew they channeled off the tree fronds and into a series of shells at night and the ocean water they distilled in a big glass rig on the oven-like black rock. It hardly ever rained.

The dew catchers were demolished, the careful channels shredded by the wind. The water in the shells was clouded by sand. Rodney ran for the still under the last red rays of the rapidly disappearing sun, praying, because they didn't have any more glass, they didn't have anything left from the jumper, they were down to nothing, no schematics, nothing extra, hardly any power--and the still was intact. Not even knocked over. A precious half-liter puddled in the basin.

Rodney knelt by it, panting. The heat of the stone burned his knees, but he didn't care. "Is it okay?" Ronon yelled from the trees.

"Yes," Rodney said, "it's fine."

The sun went out. Down. It only felt like it went out. Rodney rested his head on his hands and waited for his eyes to adjust.

"I'll help you make more dew-catchers in the morning," Ronon said.

"Christ," Rodney muttered, and then yelled, because why not? "THIS ISN'T FUNNY ANY MORE!"

"And re-draw the schematics."

Rodney snorted.

"I remember the schematics," Ronon said.

"It's hopeless," Rodney said.

"It's not hopeless. There aren't any Wraith coming and there's plenty of fish."

"I am SICK! To DEATH! Of FISH!" Rodney yelled at the top of his lungs. His voice echoed off the water like a galactic librarian: "Sh! Sh! Sh!"

Ronon took his collar and shook him until he uncurled, then kissed him hard, harder, and harder still, until he relaxed enough for Ronon to pull him into his lap. "Be careful of the still," Rodney said automatically.

"You owe me a blow job," Ronon said. "You insulted me."

"Did I? Oh, I suppose I did. Not on the *rocks.* My *knees,*" Rodney protested.

"I know your knees." Ronon pulled him to his feet and led him, hand in hand, back down to the firepit on their beach. The remains of the schematics glittered in the firelight, the different colors of seashells that designated the crystals, the fish bones that were the wires--his personal whiteboard the size of a rugby field, now erased. His calculations, at least, were written on the walls of the jumper in Sharpie. The god damned freak storm hadn't touched those.

Rodney picked up a seashell and threw it into the water. Ronon took him by the shoulders and pushed him gently down to his knees.

It wasn't as if he *minded* the blow job penalty. Ronon's cock no longer seemed unnecessarily big. Rodney's jaws were getting used to it. His butt still wasn't used to it, since they only saved up the oil occasionally, when the nights started to seem way too long. His hands were always the right size. So were Ronon's.

"Wait," Ronon said. He stepped back and stripped down, gleaming copper in the firelight against the taunting, star-speckled sky. "Would you?"

"What?"

"Be naked."

Rodney rolled his eyes. Of all people, he had to be--though of course, there were worse people with whom to be stranded than a beautiful, exhibitionist, well-muscled pervert. For instance, Kavanagh. Or Caldwell. "I get sand in places that I don't enjoy."

"You get sand there anyway. So do I."

"Fine, fine," Rodney said. Ronon would just nag him until he got his way, and certainly he'd seen Rodney naked before. Sometimes even in the daylight. Rodney stood and dropped his jacket and pants in a neat pile by the fire. Washing day soon. They were getting sweaty.

Ronon stroked his hair and kissed him, then Rodney dropped back down and busied himself with Ronon's cock. And his balls. And his perineum, which always made Ronon shiver hard, but not quite lose his balance. And when Ronon was close, Rodney fingered the soft, hairless skin at the backs of his knees, feeling for the sweat.

"Oh," Ronon sighed. That was it. Then he sat down, heavily, and pushed Rodney down onto the sand, kissing him from mouth to nipple to hip to thigh, licking a slow stripe up his cock. Ronon worked his foreskin like an expert while nibbling a hot, wet mark into his inner thigh.

Ronon dragged him down to the shore afterwards and they floated in the shallow water. Ronon's dreads bumped against Rodney's shoulder with each small swell of the waves. "I don't think I can fix the jumper," Rodney said.

"I can redraw the schematics," Ronon said.

"Yes, you said that, and I still don't believe you."

Ronon trailed his hand across Rodney's chest. After a second, Rodney realized he was tracing a pattern. The wiring pattern. "You asked me if I saw what a beautiful pattern it made," Ronon said. "I said yes."

Rodney blinked. "I did? You did?"

"I don't know how it works, but I remember the shape."

Rodney jumped up, splashing upright in the knee-high water. "Come on!"

"It's night," Ronon pointed out.

"Well, that's what the fire is for! Hup! Hup!" He clapped his hands.

Ronon grabbed his thigh and yanked him back into the water. Rodney spluttered and hit back; Ronon made some kind of lurching move and landed full-body on top of him. Rodney's head splashed into the wet sand at the wave line. "No," Ronon said.

"Ow!"

Ronon kissed his forehead. "There's time."

"It's been eight damn months! I've had time, too much time, too much sunlight--"

Ronon kissed him.

"--UV," Rodney said, trying to wriggle out from under Ronon. There was a shell in his back. "My lifetime radiation--"

Ronon kissed him again. He was a good kisser. When he broke it off, Rodney couldn't remember what he had been saying. He stroked the deep line of Ronon's spine, his hand skittering over the wet skin. It was blacker than midnight inside the curtain of Ronon's hair; no stars, no glitter of moons on the water, only salt and wet and fish breath. "I was thinking," Ronon said, softly, "you were saying that you could take the DHD crystals and we could launch, but then we'd be stranded in space with nothing to eat and no way to get home rather than stranded on an island with plenty to eat and no way to get home."

"Yes, that's a reasonably accurate summary."

"So in six months, it's a year. If it's not fixed by then, let's do it."

"Let's--"

"Launch."

"You mean kill ourselves," Rodney said.

"Fly into space and hope."

And Rodney didn't have anything to say to that, except, "It's a year in four months, not six."

"Not on Sateda." Which was a perfectly adequate rebuttal, given that they weren't on Earth, either. Ronon rolled over, and they both looked up at the stars, holding hands.


	2. The Happy Ending

Rodney's belly was growing. Ronon liked frying things, liked feeding Rodney, and liked the belly that resulted, and it wasn't as if Details Magazine or Colonel Sheppard was around to disagree with him, so Rodney supposed this was a good thing.

He stopped staring at his stomach and cracked his neck again. "Quit it," Ronon said, startling Rodney into dropping his pen.

"Quit what?"

"Quit breaking your neck."

"Don't be ridiculous. I would never risk my spine." Rodney picked up his pen and went back to his calculations on the primitive but undeniably effective abacus. "You know, it occurred to me that I could build a basic spaceship. That tar by the other river probably means oil, and I could refine fuel from oil easily enough."

"But you're not excited. Why not?" Ronon finished stacking wood by the fireplace and leaned on Rodney's desk.

"I worked it out over lunch, and judging--this is crude, of course, just the measurements I could take with my spyglass over there," gesturing at the instrument not even worthy of being called a telescope, the glass was so poorly ground; he had to work on that--"we're 3.4 light years from the nearest star."

"Sounds far."

"It would take about 750 years to get there with the speed I estimate I could get out of a conventional rocket."

"Oh."

"Maybe 500," Rodney said.

"If you were a woman, we could try," Ronon said. Rodney scowled up at him, and then they had dinner.

The jumper was in the back yard, covered in a tarp, burnt out and dead but for the single, faint beacon it was broadcasting to the stars. The remaining power crystal--too weak to get them off the ground again, useless otherwise on this gateless planet--would keep the beacon going for a thousand years. Rodney kept his manuscripts in the jumper. Ronon wrote his name on the walls in a big, bold hand: SPECIALIST RONON DEX WAS HERE.


	3. The Unhappy Ending

When the life support shut off, there was no sound but their breathing. Forty seconds, Rodney estimated but didn't say. They were already at zero centigrade.

He was sitting on Ronon's lap. Ronon's dreads fanned over both their shoulders like a cocoon. They breathed together, nose to nose, eyelashes to cheek, and neither of them spoke, and neither of them let go.


	4. The CANDY AND RAINBOWS Ending

"I think this will work," Rodney said.

"Huh," Ronon said noncommittally.

"Oh, shut up! I had to independently invent mining, smelting, glass-blowing, and vacuums for this! It's beautiful," Rodney cooed, cradling his interstellar radio.

"Okay."

Rodney slipped the crystal into the cradle and it glowed. He whooped and jumped around carefully in a primal dance of joy, and to his great surprise, Ronon joined him in both.

Two hours later, the spaceship came. "Oh, dear God, it worked," Rodney said.

"That's not one of ours," Ronon said.

"Oh, no! I refuse!" Rodney shouted. "You greasy Wraith bastards!"

But a beam shot down from the ship, and it wasn't the Wraith at all. They were quite friendly, in fact, and very advanced, with delicious food. They were just passing through, they said, and they caught the distress beacon, and were they in trouble? And was it uncomfortable walking on their hind legs? Because it looked rather awkward. Did they suffer from some injury?

The aliens were awfully handy with only the horn on their heads to pilot the ship. They did a lot of it mentally, Rodney figured, or with eye movement controls. They had very large, luminous eyes.

"Huh," John said, after they beamed home and had guns pointed at them and were cleared by medical and then watched very closely for two days and only then, when Atlantis was sure they weren't Wraith spies or something, carefully hugged and welcomed back. "Rescued by interstellar space unicorns."

"Your bigotry is truly disturbing," Rodney said, petting his gloriously clean clothes.


End file.
